So that creepy feeling needed to be respected.
And so did Laura.
“You know that what you did was wrong. You know that you should have told me.” Ah, here it comes, he thought. Good. Let's get this out in the open so we can deal with it like adults.
“We don't need to talk about this right now,” Dylan jumped in. Mike's hands twitched. If he strangled him would it be justifiable homicide? Instead he shoved him, hard, and stepped on his foot.
“Ow! Hey! What was that about?” Dylan crossed his leg up and massaged his instep. More flour. Jesus.
Mike gestured toward Laura while disdainfully brushing flour off his arm, carefully aiming it toward Dylan. “Let the lady talk.”
A grateful look from Laura was his reward. “We do need to talk about it. Now. So settle down there, buckaroo.”
Both men flinched, Mike's entire body turning into a lightning rod during a storm, directing all the electricity in the air through his nose, making his scalp stand on fire. Dylan just gawked at her, wide-eyed.
Instantly on alert, she seemed to realize something had happened, but Mike knew she wouldn't understand. “Did I just say something wrong?” she asked.
He leaned forward, wishing he could touch her, soothe her. Knowing he couldn't. Not yet. “No, no. Nothing wrong. It's just – that's what Jill used to call Dylan when he was, well, when he just was. Buckaroo. We haven't heard it in nearly two years.”
That face. Her cheekbones were so perfect, soft curves blunting hard bone, her eyes serene, questioning, and hard all at once, brows knitted in confusion and wariness, in something more – a look of evaluation, of surmising what was critical and worth knowing, to apply to some emotional calculus he didn't understand.
Buckaroo.
How one word could so easily change everything. Dylan swallowed so hard Mike could feel the click in his throat, and then he realized he had to break the tension, he had to make this all make sense, because Laura and Dylan weren't going to do it. All those years of Jill and Dylan carrying the emotional water in the relationship had made him stale. Soft. Lazy.
Time to step up.
Literally. He stood, took two steps and reached for her shoulder. The sweater was warm, she was warm and soft, and she smelled like something sweet, a vanilla-scented perfume that made half the words fall out of his head before he could say them, replaced by a desire to embrace her and just stand there, bathed in her. Warmed by her.
Holding back that impulse was 100 times harder than not shoving Dylan had been. “Laura, it's fine.” She tipped her face up, head at an angle, eyebrows up and questioning. Is it really? her face seemed to ask.
“I know,” she answered. He froze. Expecting to comfort her, to reassure her, instead she came out with the one answer he'd least expected, the one answer that made his heart swell and his mind nearly crack in half. For Laura knew herself far better than he had ever imagined.
And that made this all the more compelling.
“If there is any hope here,” she said, talking to him but also giving her eyes equally to Dylan, who now stood next to Mike, “we need to get two things straight.”
They nodded.
“No more lies. None. That doesn't mean we need to spill everything about ourselves into one big baggage pile-up right here and right now – ”
“But we could! I could! When I was in eighth grade I set fire to a field that caught train tracks on fire. And my senior year I slept with the new, hot assistant principal at my – ” Laura cut Dylan off with a well-placed finger to the lips. Mike got hard just watching it. He could only imagine what Dylan felt.
“No.” She tsk tsk'd him, finger now wagging in his face. “But no more enormous lies. You're lucky I am even here tonight.”
“We know,” they said in unison. She laughed. Mike felt a shift in the balance of power now, as if she had come in uncertain and questioning and now – she was the one in charge. It made his body buzz a bit more, set his senses on fire, and made him want to rescind his earlier offer of no expectations.
Fortunately, his rational mind knew better. But his body....He'd need to run a solid half marathon to pound this one out.
“What's the second rule?” Dylan asked, his hand running up and down her arm, slow and steady.
“No sex. Not tonight. Not until I ask. Being double-teamed like that – ”
Dylan snorted involuntarily. Mike cocked his jaw in irritation and kicked him in the calf. Dylan yelped.
Laura just shook her head and resumed. “Being – OK, new word – ambushed, by you guys, was really destabilizing. I don't regret anything we did. Not for one second.” She took a step back and Mike understood why. It was getting hot in here.
“And yet...I need to just hang out with you. Get comfortable. Understand how this all works. It's not like there are books out there on how to be a threesome.”
“Yeah, I know,” Mike muttered. “I checked.”
Every muscle on Laura's face came to life with laughter. “Me, too!”
Dylan shook his head. “I totally didn't.” He stopped rubbing Laura's arm and ran his hand through his hair. A puff of white smoke popped up over his head and his dark hair stood on end. He looked, to Mike, like an adult, human version of a Muppet. The one who cooked with the Swedish chef.
“Oh, my God, you look like Beaker! From the Muppets!” Laura squealed, patting his head as the hair sprang back up. “Myork! Myork! Myork!” she shouted, jumping up and down, her sweater climbing up and giving Mike a splendid view of her as**s in what looked to be well-loved jeans. He could love them, too.
Being patted on the head didn't seem to suit Dylan; he looked like a dog being poked in the eye by a toddler, begging his master to rescue him, knowing he couldn't bite back. Tough shit, Buddy, Mike thought. You get to be Beaker for now.
Dylan rescued himself, his fingers clasping Laura's wrist the third time she tried to flatten his hair. He led her into the kitchen and handed her a colander. “Unlike the Swedish chef dude, I don't set meals on fire, so let's get this pasta going.”
“You do so set things on fire,” Mike objected, ready to tell Laura plenty of stories about his roommates kitchen screw-ups.
“Not since I became a firefighter.”
“Touché. You did nearly destroy a dorm kitchen single-handedly with a toaster and a frosted Pop-Tart, though.”
“Not my fault. Do you have any idea how many fire safety seminars there are about Pop-Tart glaze? It's breathtaking.”
“Yeah. Makes me gasp.” Mike poured a few inches of wine in his and Laura's glasses as she shot him a surprised look. Sarcasm didn't suit him, he knew. It oozed out when he was anxious.
Anxious? Still? Things seemed settled. Ish.
Ding! The kitchen timer went off. Dylan leaped and ran, leaving a small cloud of white flour in his wake. “The meatballs!” he shouted. Mike and Laura followed, curious.
“Oh, what is that amazing scent?” Laura asked, pretending to swoon. Maybe she really was. Mike was half delirious himself from the smell of whatever Dylan was making. Taking a chance, Mike slid his arm around Laura's shoulders. She relaxed into him, keeping her eyes on Dylan. The press of her body into his felt so comfortable he needed to pause and blink, arm resting against the nape of her neck, across her shoulders, the casual comfort of the gesture so...right.
This was what he missed most. The normalcy of a night of cooking, of hanging out, watching movies and just relaxing. Being. Living. As Dylan pulled a meatball out and put parts of it on forks for everyone to taste, something in Mike released. Exhaled.
It felt damn good. Better than sex right now.
Laura snuggled in closer, her arm reaching for the fork, taking it from Dylan, lips closing over the morsel, her ribs expanding against Mike as she sighed. Eyeing the contact between the two, Dylan just smiled. Cool. Everyone was finally starting to chill.
His grandma's magic meatballs cured everything.
If not everything, at least they brought them all a little culinary bliss. He tasted a bite. Perfection. A blend of beef, a little veal, some pork, and oregano, basil, pepper, a touch of sugar and some grated parmesan with a tiny bit of mozzarella. Loads of garlic, of course! Juicy and coated in homemade tomato sauce (was there any other kind? If it came in a jar it wasn't real food), each bite was like stepping into an Italian restaurant in the North End in Boston, red velvet booths and low light and white-shirted waiters shouting in Italian.
“All that's left is the salad. Give me a few minutes and I'll have everything out.” He surveyed the countertop. Destroyed. Red sauce everywhere (really? How'd it get on the kitchen ceiling fan blades?), the backsplash a buffet of splotches, every large pot dirty and stacked crooked in the sink, and zero counter space. None.
“I'll help,” Laura offered, peeling off Mike, who looked disappointed. Good.
“Great!” He handed her a decanter of olive oil and a cheese grinder. “Can you put the parm on the pasta and if it needs more oil, add some?”
“What about me?” Mike asked. “Need anything?”
“Set the table?” Mike nodded and made quick work of it, grabbing plates and shuttling to and fro between dining room and kitchen. It all felt so...domestic.
Until Mike put a dent in it. “Hey, Dyl!” he hissed, nodding to the hallway. Laura was tossing pasta and rotating the cheese grinder handle, sprinkles of parmesan snowing on the bowl of noodles.
